Indigo(77)

“Are you all right?” asked Selene, who did not look very all right herself.

“I’ll survive.” Or so Indigo assumed. Everything ached, and she was still bleeding from too many places to count, but she was on her feet—and that was something.

“Is it … is he…?” one of the sisters asked.

“He’s locked away. For now. He can’t hear us or see what’s going on.”

Selene assured them, “She’s been learning to control him.”

“Manage him,” Indigo argued. “That’s the best I can do, and now I’ve gone and made him a deal. He kept his end of the bargain, but I suspect he’s trying to lure me into a false sense of security.”

“He can’t be trusted,” Selene said with terrifying confidence.

“I know. But he did what I asked, and now he’s cut off again. So we have to move fast.”

“What do we do?” asked one of the other nuns. She was a study in confusion, both impossibly powerful and every bit as lost as a child.

Indigo took a deep breath and tried to think. The boiler ticked and the mortar dust still trickled, and the pipes overhead rattled and buzzed. “Selene, can we rely on these women? The ones who’ve been trying to murder us all this time?”

“Now that they know they’ve been manipulated, yes.”

“It was never our intention…,” the lost one said with a quiver in her voice. “We serve a goddess of honorable death, not this arbitrary carnage. Selene tried to warn us … but we didn’t listen. We owe her a terrible debt.”

“Okay, then here’s the plan: You ladies track down Graham Edwards. Whatever he’s doing … make him stop it. Park him some place safe, and don’t let him out of your sight. Meanwhile, Selene and I will go to Rafe’s apartment. There has to be something there—something we can use. Even if he doesn’t have the Void Portal, we might find something we can use against him, or against Caedis. Or even against Damastes, in the long run.”

“What does that long run look like, for you and him?” asked Selene with a note of dread in her words, and a crinkle of resignation on her forehead.

“I don’t know yet. Obviously killing me won’t get rid of him.” She gestured at the headless corpse still draining on the floor. “Damastes said his sister’s still out there—she’s just lost a vessel, and she’ll have to pick someone else to ride. So it’s not as easy as suicide,” she added wryly. “We’ll have to pull him out of me one way or another, and once we do, we’ll need a place to put him. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“No, you’re right. First things first.” Selene nodded. “The sisters will go collect Edwards—the news said he was withdrawing to the family’s weekend home in Scarsdale. You and I can scour Rafe’s place. We’ll meet back at your apartment—Nora’s apartment—in a few hours. Will that work?”

Indigo tried not to sag down into a little puddle of beat-up flesh. “It’d damned well better.” She wiped at her sweaty face with the back of her hand and sighed. “It pretty much has to.”





16

Rafe’s apartment building was not what Nora had expected. She would almost have thought it was the wrong building, except that she had tracked the address down through Rafe’s teacher’s certificate and security info, and New York City’s tax database—she could always be sure those guys would never let a taxpayer slip through their fingers.

She stared up at the building. It looks like mine. He’d made himself the most powerful of the inner circle of the Children of Phonos without their ever knowing it, yet his apartment looked more like something she’d expect from … well, from a public-school teacher. Obviously he knew better than to tip his hand while he was still waiting for his big payoff. Still, she’d sort of expected his place to be more … sinister? Flamboyant?

Whatever. His taste and motives didn’t matter—it was just something to stick in the back of her mind. For now.

“You think he’s home?” she asked Selene. When no response came, she glanced over to find herself alone, a side door shutting behind Selene.

Nora sighed and raced to catch the door, following Selene up the stairwell to the fourth floor. The hall outside Rafe’s apartment was quiet. Too quiet? No, not really—she was just on edge and still a little tired from the fight at the NYChronicle. The trip across town hadn’t provided much of a rest, and she had bruises and aches everywhere.

In the fourth-floor corridor, Nora slid into the shadows. She was about to enter the apartment that way when Selene turned the knob and pushed the door open an inch. The apartment was as silent as the hall, but that unlocked door screamed trap.

“Unlocked,” Selene said. “Wait here while—”

“No.” Indigo flowed into the darkness and rode the shadows through the gap. No alarm, no attack … Nothing moved, but there was a smell.…

“Impatient?” Selene murmured. “Or are you showing off?”

Indigo continued along the shadows inside the unlit apartment. Another step … Something plinked onto her arm. She pulled back quickly and saw a red spot near her elbow. A drop of bright blood. She looked up. There, on the ceiling was …